The Awareness Center closed. We operated from April 30, 1999 - April 30, 2014. This site is being provided for educational & historical purposes.
We were the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault (JCASA); and were dedicated to ending sexual violence in Jewish communities globally. We did our best to operate as the make a wish foundation for Jewish survivors of sex crimes. In the past we offered a clearinghouse of information, resources, support and advocacy.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Early one Shabbos not that many years ago, a car accident took place just outside a shul. The 300-family congregation had just started services when they heard the loud boom of a car and truck colliding. Several shul members ran outside to see if they could help. The rabbi of the congregation waited a few minutes and he too walked out for a moment to see if he could be of assistance. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. The truck could be driven and after the police took their report, the truck driver drove off. The car on the other hand, was destroyed. The rabbi asked the man who had been driving it if he needed any help and invited him inside the shul. The driver accepted, seeking a warm, comfortable place to calm down following the accident and wait for whatever help would be coming. Once inside the rabbi asked the man if he was Jewish. He was. The rabbi then asked if he would like to say Birkat Hagomel, the Blessing of Thanks for surviving a dangerous situation. The driver agreed and did so. What was surprising to people who were not members of the shul was not that the rabbi would welcome someone into the congregation — the rabbi was known for his warmth, friendship and genuine caring for others — but that he would do so on a Shabbat. Several weeks after the incident a member of the community, somewhat perplexed by what had transpired, asked the rabbi about his decision, to which he responded simply, “It is the right thing to do.”

The punch line for the story is not that the driver of the car, as a sign of gratitude, made a large donation, nor that he himself became religious, moved and joined the shul, or that he decided to send his children to a yeshiva. As far as I know, none of those things happened. The moral of the story is the austere fact that the rabbi did the right thing. He did not shun the man, ignore him or demand a specific behavior of him. He provided him some cordiality and the man felt calmer: a small but important attempt to make the world a nicer place.

I wonder lately where this “pay it forward” approach to life has gone. Some believe that we are all narcissists and as narcissists we believe in our own selfish infallibility. According to Doctors Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell, one of the common pitfalls of current society is that we have allowed ourselves to become so insistent that our way is the only correct one that we license ourselves to impose our demands on others. As they point out in their text “The Narcissism Epidemic,” we live in an “Age of entitlement.” This sense of privilege is so pervasive, not limited at all to individuals or certain ethnic or religious groups, that some truly believe they have the right to impose their beliefs, even private religious beliefs, on other people. Not everyone acts this way — most people do not — but those who do, attempt to impose their unique views on others by placing a tremendous burden on them. Whether it be demanding from others how one should dress through the use of “chastity squads,” to sanctioning or even rioting against those who report child abuse to the proper authorities, the question of whether a parking lot should be opened on Shabbat, even to threatening boycotts if a Zionist rabbi is elected in Jerusalem — these have no longer become topics for discussion but of intimidation. I personally would like to see less, or even no, traffic on Shabbat in Jerusalem, but I find it distasteful to employ rioting as a means to accomplish it. I do not mind, and even encourage, if people choose to dress modestly but as Rabbi Yehuda Henkin shows in his book “Understanding Tzniut,” rules for modesty are subject to differing interpretations in various communities. Randomly imposing dress codes is simply rude and destructive. The most competent rabbi should be selected for a position, not as a result of blackmail, and abuse must be dealt with properly.

It is not an easy task to teach someone with a hyper-inflated sense of superiority how to value others or even concede to another’s opinion. Psychotherapeutic treatments for narcissism acknowledge an individual’s egotistic sense of self-importance, while limiting any acknowledgement of their own grandiosity. This approach is thought to help the person to begin to see the world from a perspective beyond their own. Socially, however, this is significantly more difficult, because acknowledgement on any level becomes viewed as public acceptance. The more reinforcement given publicly, the more justified the movement begins to feel. Herein lays both the problem as well as the solution.

The recent visit by the Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok and Toldos Aharon rebbeim forces us to confront this issue very directly. We are, in a very real sense, required to help our brethren and co-religionists, but to what degree and for what intent? What is the right thing to do when it comes to situations in which we have major disagreements?

There are two aspects to this issue that must be acknowledged. The first is that at least some positions taken by people we disagree with are reasonable and perhaps even accurate. For example, it would be better if Shabbat were observed more properly. The other side, though, is that we cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated. The real problem is where and how to draw the line between a small-minded worldview determined to impose a rigid singular position, on the one hand — while simultaneously but absolutely demanding tolerance and understanding for all on the other.

From a psychological perspective the best way to deal with this issue is to marginalize only the self-important stone throwers and not generalize their ideology of aggressiveness to all who may look like them. Violence tends to act as a negative reinforcer and we do not want to encourage violence. If a child is repeatedly hit by a parent we find that the child’s behavior only worsens. The child has learned that this is an effective way to get a reaction, albeit a negative one. Ignoring also does not work. What does work is ignoring minor issues while, at the same time, broadly opening channels for communication that are predicated on understanding and developing respect toward one another. Ben Zoma said, “Who is wise? Someone who learns from every person.” With this as our guide we will find it easier to simply find the right thing to do.

In Memory of Mordechai (Motty) Borger z"l

Motty Borger z'l

It is with great sadness that we report the passing of 24-year-old, newly married, Mordechai (Motty) Borger z”l, who passed away after jumping off a seventh-floor balcony at the Avenue PlazaHotel on 13th Avenue at 47th Street in Brooklyn, NY.

Motty, was married this past Tuesday night at Ateres Avrohom Hall in Williamsburg. The suicide took place yesterday morning, November 12, on the second day of sheva brachos. Motty was taken to Lutheran Medical Center in extremely serious condition.

The levaya will be held this morning (November 13), shortly after 11 a.m., at Shomrei Hachomos chapels, located at 43rd Street and Ft. Hamilton Parkway in Boro Park.

It is quoted on line that Motty “sang, he danced, he was the happiest kid on the planet,” said a friend who was but one wedding guest among the 500 who attended the reportedly lavish wedding. “The guy was so full of life. He was so happy to marry her,” said another wedding guest.

Motty's father, Rabbi Shmuel Borger,is well known for his kindnessand involvement in tzorchei tzibbur. He founded the Amudei Shesh Choir years ago and is a popular videographer.

Jerusalem - “Satan in the form of a rov” are the words the children who suffered abuse at his hands use to describe Elior Chen, the man currently sitting in jail awaiting trial.

A year and a half after the story came to light and the day after a serious charge sheet was filed against Elior Chen, the children spoke out for the first time since the extradition to Israel two weeks ago, in an exclusive interview for Israeli news site Kikar

They have not forgotten the suffering they underwent, relive those harrowing moments, feel the burns and scars left on their bodies and the loss of the mother serving a prison sentence.

Their little brother, who remains in a “vegetative” state, makes it impossible for them to forget the horror. Yesterday he visited his home for the first time in 18 months, lying on a special bed that cost thousands of dollars, silently gazing as his happy siblings surrounded him.

The children have heard the various claims Elior Chen is innocent, making them boil with rage. “Our bodies are full of burns and scars from what he did. How can someone say it didn’t happen?” Another child notes that there are people who deny the Holocaust happened.

Upon hearing the name Elior Chen preceded by the word “rov,” the children burst out in objection. “He’s a rov? He’s Satan disguised as a rov.”

They say they will never forgive him. “There is no mechiloh for what he did to our family. All of the children were injured. Ima’s in prison. He took the building we built up and dismantled it.”

Elior Chen’s father, who claims his son is innocent, has stated he wishes everyone could have such a tzaddik for a son. In response one of the girls in the shattered family says, “I wish his sons were like my little brother, the one lying as a ‘vegetable’ in the hospital.”

Were Elior Chen’s fate left in the hands of the children he abused, he would suffer a similar fate. “I would burn him until he died, just like he burned me,” says one of the boys. “I would cut him up with a sword,” adds another.

Their father is also enraged over Elior Chen’s claims of innocence. “He has a lot of chutzpah not to admit to it. That’s part of his wickedness. This man is dangerous. Even if he spends 30 years behind bars, he’ll still be a danger to the public.”

Time has not healed the wounds. The father does not work, but spends all his time taking care of the eight children. They live in hiding. Their friends at school have no inkling of the nightmare they went through. They always keep their scars out of sight and never have friends visit their motherless home.

Friends and loved ones bid a tearful farewell yesterday to the groom
who jumped from a Brooklyn hotel room window just two days after his
wedding.

"You know what it is for a father to be at his son's
wedding and then to be here," said Shmuel Borger, the father of
24-year-old suicide victim Motty Borger. "This wedding was not in vain.
It was not in vain. From sadness will come happiness."

Motty's widow, Mali, arrived on her mother's arm for the ceremony at the Shomrei Hachomos funeral home in Brooklyn.

Borger plunged seven stories from a balcony at the Avenue Plaza Hotel
in Borough Park at 6:45 a.m. Thursday. His wife, who had married him at a
lavish Williamsburg ceremony two days earlier, was asleep nearby.

"I was in the hospital last night and Mali asked me, 'Do you think
it's the evil eye after having such a beautiful wedding?' " her father,
Avraham Gutman, told the mourners.

He said he replied, "It is what God wanted."

Some refused to believe it was suicide. Rabbi Moishe Mayer Weiss said
Borger may have gone onto the balcony for air and gotten disoriented.
Sources close to the probe told The Post that there was no way he could
have fallen without deliberate action. _________________________________________________________________________________

It is with great sadness that we report the passing of 24-year-old, newly married, Mordechai (Motty) Borger z”l, who passed away after jumping off a seventh-floor balcony at the Avenue PlazaHotel on 13th Avenue at 47th Street in Brooklyn, NY.

Motty, was married this past Tuesday night at Ateres Avrohom Hall in
Williamsburg. The suicide took place yesterday morning, November 12, on
the second day of sheva brachos. Motty was taken to Lutheran Medical Center in extremely serious condition.

The levaya will be held this morning (November 13), shortly after 11 a.m., at Shomrei Hachomos chapels, located at 43rd Street and Ft. Hamilton Parkway in Boro Park.

It is quoted on line that Motty “sang, he danced, he was the happiest kid on the planet,” said a friend who was but one wedding guest among the 500 who attended the reportedly lavish wedding. “The guy was so full of life. He was so happy to marry her,” said another wedding guest.

Motty's father, Rabbi Shmuel Borger,is well known for his kindnessand involvement in tzorchei tzibbur. He founded the Amudei Shesh Choir years ago and is a popular videographer.

A
report that a Brooklyn man who committed suicide two days after his
wedding was a victim of sex abuse has riled the Orthodox community.

Motty Borger

A Brooklyn newlywed who jumped to his death from a hotel balcony the
night after his wedding was tormented by memories of being sexually
molested as a Jewish student, sources say.

After joyfully
singing and dancing at their lavish celebration in Williamsburg on Nov.
3, Motty Borger, 24, bared his secret anguish to his bride, Mali Gutman,
the next day -- and the revelation caused a strain, a source close to
the family told The Post.

"That entire day he discussed it with
her. He told her the story of his life, how he felt so awful and he
couldn't go near her," the source said. The couple had met just last
July, after a matchmaker set them up.

TORMENT: A suicidal Motty Borger "felt he couldn't go near" Mali Gutman the day after their Brooklyn wedding.

"When he got married, he realized he couldn't face up to it, and he told his wife that he needed help." The stunned bride responded, "So, why did you marry me?"

Borger reportedly answered, "You are absolutely right. It was not right of me to get married."
At 6:45 a.m., while Mali slept, Borger climbed a railing outside their
seventh-floor room at Avenue Plaza Hotel and leaped, police say. He
died hours later at a hospital.

Friends insist that Borger -- described as fun-loving, smiling and cheerful -- wouldn't take his own life.

"I know Motty, and I know he didn't jump. It was an accident," one
said. The rabbi who spoke at his funeral called reports of suicide
"wickedness."

A security video at the hotel shows him looking "agitated" in an elevator with his wife, cops said.

The city Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide. The NYPD is
investigating the sex-abuse allegations, said a police official.

A source familiar with the tragedy said Borger had confided in close
relatives that he was molested while a teen attending a yeshiva,
possibly by a rabbi, but they never went to police.

Mordechai (Motty) Borger, 24, jumped from the seventh-floor terrace
of his hotel on November 5. His bride, Mali Gutman, whom he married on
Nov 3 after they met through a matchmaker, was asleep in the room.

A spokeswoman for the NYC medical examiner’s office said the death has been ruled a suicide.

Activists working to expose sex-abuse scandals in Orthodox yeshivot
said that a report in the New York Post that Mr Borger had been molested
as a yeshivah student was accurate — despite angry comments posted from
Mr Borger’s acquaintances. The Post, quoting an unnamed source, said
that Mr Borger had told his wife about the abuse after the wedding. He
was seen on security video footage in the hotel lift appearing agitated.

On the internet, the story prompted a huge number of comments asking questions about Mr Borger’s private life.

“He is a survivor” of sex abuse, said Vicki Polin, founder of the
Awareness Centre, a Baltimore-based coalition. She said that Mr Borger
had told his parents about the abuse, but they had not sent him to
therapy or gone to the police.

Mr Borger’s father, Shmuel, the founder of Amudei Shaish Boys’ Choir,
has posted an audio message on the web lamenting his son’s death after a
“magnificent wedding” and noting that “a chosson’s week of sheva
broches” turned into seven days of mourning.

He urges people to reach out to friends and family. “Don’t be ashamed to say I’m sorry,” he advises.

Ben Hirsch of the group Survivors for Justice said that while he does
not know the truth of Mr Borger’s death, he does know of several
suicides as a result of sexual abuse.

“The community’s protection of the abuser can sometimes do more damage than the abuse itself.”

Asher Lipner, vice-president of the Jewish Board of Advocates for
Children, said that sex-abuse victims can develop post-traumatic stress
disorder.

“A young man who is newly married… it could trigger flashbacks to a
time when he last experienced sexual contact, which was abuse,” he said.

He said there was growing pressure on the Orthodox community to
publicise sex abuse in yeshivot, adding: “There is an incredible amount
of pressure put on someone not to talk about what happened. For over 40
years we’ve had in our community 100 per cent denial that the problem
exists. When you have a dirty secret and you cover it up, it grows like a
cancer.”____________________________________________________________________________________Suicide groom's anguishBy Reuven Blau ad Susan EdelmanNew York Post - January 18, 2010

A Brooklyn man who committed suicide two days into his honeymoon had
confided to a friend's dad that he was molested by a prominent rabbi now
facing charges of sexually abusing other boys.

Borger's videographer dad, Shmuel, founded the boys choir Amudei
Sheish. The Borgers and Lebovits shared strong ties to the Munkatch
Hasidic sect. Borger attended the sect's school and summer camp and its
synagogue in Borough Park. Lebovits, too, was a regular.

Borger confided his secret to his bride, Mali Gutman, the day after
their Nov. 3, 2009, wedding in Williamsburg, a source close to the
family said.

At 6:45 a.m. on Nov. 5, as his wife slept, Borger
jumped from the seventh-floor balcony of their room at the Avenue Plaza
Hotel, cops said.

Lebovits is accused of repeatedly sodomizing
two boys and fondling another, sometimes in his car and even in a
mikvah, a ritual bath, in a synagogue, from April 2000 to September
2004.

"It was really well known in the community," said a source close to the probe. "It was no secret."

Case of Rabbi Baruch Lebovitz in the death of Motty Borger, the son of Shmuel Borger PIX News - January 26, 2010

Newscast of the case of Rabbi Baruch Lebovitz in the death of Motty
Borger, who was the son of Shmuel Borger (PIX News). This news report
also features Rabbi Nochem Rosenberg (member of The Awareness Center's
international advisory board), Joseph Diangelo and Joel Engleman.

Rabbi’s sexual abuse trial opensJTA - March 4, 2010The alleged victim took the stand as the sexual molestation case against a rabbi began in a New York courtroom.

Rabbi
Baruch Lebovits, 59, who owns a travel agency in Borough Park, is
accused of sexually molesting a Jewish teenager in 2004 and 2005. He
faces up to seven years in prison if convicted of a criminal sexual act
in the second degree.

The alleged victim, now 22, testified
Wednesday in Brooklyn Supreme Court that the rabbi assaulted him in his
car several times over a 10-month period, luring him into the vehicle
with promises that he could drive, the New York Daily News reported.

He
is no longer a part of the Chasidic community and has been treated for
drug addictions that began after the alleged assaults, the paper said.

Lebovits' lawyer in opening statements called the alleged victim a "con man."

Lebovits is awaiting trial on charges of molesting two others, according to the Daily News.

Rabbi Baruch Lebovits indicted for sexually assaulting Brooklyn teenager
five years ago. Complainant says reason for his delay in reporting
abuse due to closed-off nature of community

The
Jewish community in Brooklyn is ablaze following an indictment filed
against a rabbi charged with sexually assaulting teenagers. A
22-year-old man testified in court for the first time Wednesday and said
that the rabbi lured him into his car where he sexually assaulted him
when he was a teenager, the New York Daily News has reported.

Rabbi
Baruch Lebovits, 59, has been charged with sexual assault following a
line of incidents which allegedly occurred in 2004 and 2005. The
prosecution claims that Lebovits assaulted the man on several occasions.

Asked
whether the rabbi said anything during the attack the young man, who
appeared distressed, replied "He said something but I don't remember."
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Patricia DiMango repeatedly asked him to
speak up. Asked how he was feeling the young man replied, "Very
uncomfortable and confused."

The man said that the
rabbi's abuse had ruined his life describing the development of his drug
addiction from which he eventually recovered.

"It's a
shame to talk about it and I have low self-esteem," he said when asked
why it took him six years to file a complaint. He noted that such things
were not talked of in his community.

The rabbi's attorney, Arthur Aidala, described the complainant as a "con man" with a history of drug offences.

"There's
no video, there's no eyewitness, no DNA, there's no fingerprints...
That evidence doesn't exist because all these acts didn't happen," he
said.

The defendant who owns a travel agency in Brooklyn
is slated to be indicted for sexually abusing two other teens. If
convicted, the maximum sentence he could face is seven years in prison.

A Brooklyn rabbi faces decades behind bars - and sentencing on the eve of Passover - after a jury quickly convicted him of sexually assaulting a teenage boy.Rabbi Baruch Lebovits showed no reaction as Brooklyn Supreme Court jurors found him guilty on eight of 10 counts after three hours of deliberations."Thank God, justice is served," the victim's father said in the packed courtroom as Lebovits family members wiped tears from their eyes."This makes a statement to the Jewish community," said Beth Kaplan of the group Sacred Lives, one of several advocates who sat through the week-long trial.

"There is denial. The majority of the Orthodox community doesn't believe this can happen. Here we see it can happen."

Prosecutor
Miss Gregory had told jurors that Lebovits, 59, lured his son's friend,
who was 16 at the time, into a car with a promise of driving lessons in
2004 and 2005. The young man testified that Lebovits would have him
pull over and then perform a sex act on him.

There was no physical
evidence and the accuser was a recovering drug addict and a thief -
points defense lawyer Arthur Aidala hammered home.

He claimed the
victim was trying to shake down Lebovits, who owned a Borough Park
travel agency - and said a detective withheld a document showing the
victim had talked about being paid off.

Lebovits, who still faces charges he molested two other minors, could get up to four years on each count.

"Rabbi"
Baruch Mordechai Lebovits was convicted of child molestation in a court
room in New York. He will be sentenced on Monday, March 29, 2010. The Awareness Center is aware that "rabbi" Lebovits has many supporters who are trying to ask the judge for leniency.On
behalf of those who were sexually victimized, The Awareness Center is
asking everyone to write letters to Judge Patricia M. Di Mango letting
her know how you feel about this convicted sex offender. It would be
helpful if you let Judge Di Mango know about the impact sex crimes has
on Jewish communities, and also for those of you who are not Jewish --
how the impact sexual predators like Lebovits have on society at large.

If you feel
comfortable and are a survivor, friend and or family member of a
survivor please be sure to mention that in your letter. Please keep the
letters short, yet make them personal.

Be sure to put at the top of the letter, the date and Re: Sentencing of Baruch Lebovits. Also include your full name, address, and signature.

The
Awareness Center is also asking that if you live in New York to be
present at the sentencing hearing on Monday March 29th. It is suggest
that you arrive no later then 9:30 a.m. to insure you get a seat in the
court room.

In
the matter of the dispute-matter between the sides, that is Mr. ____
Side A the plaintiff, and between Rabbi Berl Ashkenazy shlit”a (should
merit to long good years??) the defendant, side B, after the (sides)
disputants agreed to heed the judgment of the dayan signed below, and
after listening to the arguments and counter arguments of both sides,
and after sorting out the facts and the halacha (Jewish law) ,the
following ruling went out.

A. There is no obligation from side B to side A.

B.
In contrast to this, it is forbidden for the young man (bochur) _____
to inform on side B (Rabbi Ashkenazy) to the courts (because) [that] he
(talked on his heart) [tried to persuade him] that he should leave the
courts, which is according to their laws a grave crime, and there is an
obligation on side A to do whatever is in his ability to deter the above
mentioned young man from this (mesirah) [informing].

C.
Side B accepted on himself of his free will that he is prepared to help
the above mentioned young man with whatever is in his ability to
encourage him to go in good ways, however he will begin with him after
the above mentioned young man will remove himself altogether from the
courts of the goyim also in other matters.

And there are no more arguments and counter arguments between the sides, only peace to us and to all Israel.

Brooklyn — As the Vatican struggles with fresh headlines on scandals of child sex abuse, the Jewish communities throughout the world have been embroiled in a similar plague. In the last year, Brooklyn’s State Supreme Court has issued an increasing number of subpoenas to members of the Jewish Orthodox community in relation to child sexual abuse cases. Until recently, most of these cases were handled for the community by the community and entirely within the community.

The increase in the number of cases reported to the secular justice system by members of this particularly closed group is the result of a long process: bridges built between secular and religious judicial authorities in Brooklyn, and a strong collaboration between Jewish organizations and the District Attorney’s office through the project Kol Tzedek, Hebrew for “Voice of Justice.” The program has now reached its first year milestone.

* * *

He could spend the rest of his life in jail, but he remained silent during the four days of his trial. Baruch Mordechai Lebovits is a corpulent 59-year-old rabbi from Borough Park, in Brooklyn. On March 8, 2010, the day his verdict was to be announced, he arrived in the Kings County State Supreme Court striding behind his two lawyers, his face looking down to avoid the stares of a dozen bystanders outside Ceremonial courtroom No. 1.Lebovits was followed by five of his relatives and friends. Slowly, more and more of the rabbi’s supporters quietly entered the courtroom and congregated in the benches behind the accused. Soon, two thirds of the seats would be filled with members of the Borough Park Jewish Orthodox community. Interviews with some of these men and women revealed their complete rejection of the charges: that Lebovits molested one of his 16-year-old students in 2004. His supporters were equally unconvinced by the multiple counts of child sexual assault for which Lebovits has yet to be tried. By the end of this year, Lebovits will be judged for allegedly abusing two other children.

Seated 30 feet away from his molester on the other side of the room, the plaintiff Yoav Schonberg, now 22, was surrounded by his father, a few friends, and Kal Holczler, who claims to have been molested by his own rabbi when he was a teenager. Schonberg was the prosecution’s primary witness against Lebovits. He was timid, obviously at odds with himself, and Justice Patricia DiMango had to ask him several times to speak up during his testimony. Speaking haltingly in a frail voice, Schonberg explained to the court that on May 2, 2004, Rabbi Lebovits offered him a free driving lesson. After a few minutes, Schonberg said, Lebovits instructed him to pull the car over, at which point the rabbi unzipped the young boy’s pants and began performing oral sex. According to the Assistant District Attorney Miss Gregory, the same thing happened to Yoav Schonberg, who was 16 back then, nine more times, until February 22, 2005. “It happened many many more times, but my son wasn’t able to remember the specific dates so it is not valid for the prosecution,” explained Yaakov Schonberg, the plaintiff’s father.

When the verdict was handed down, Lebovits did not move. He did not grimace; he did not sigh almost as if he had expected it, despite his “innocent” plea. Among his supporters, though, a few wiped tears from their cheeks and gasped for breath. Many started making calls as soon as they left the courtroom, to keep the rest of the community updated. The jury found the rabbi who is also a teacher at the Munkatch yeshiva (religious school) and the owner of a travel agency in Borough Park guilty of eight of the ten counts in the indictment. The sentence will be read today. For these charges alone, Lebovits faces up to 32 years in prison, four years for each count on which he was convicted. But at least two more trials await the rabbi this year. One of his alleged victims was 16-years-old and the other was 15 at the time the assaults are said to have occurred. “In the community, I’ve spoken to dozens of families who say their children were molested by this man. Dozens! The problem is that half of them don’t want to let it be known, and the other half can’t do anything about it because it’s too late,” explained Yaakov Schonberg, in reference to the five-year statute of limitations that make it impossible for victims to file a lawsuit after they turn 23.

* * *

Brooklyn is home to over 300,000 Orthodox Jews – mainly in Williamsburg, Flatbush, Crown Heights and Borough Park — but for decades, prosecutors very rarely tackled alleged child molesters in this community. According to an October 14, 2009 article by Paul Vitello in the New York Times, “of some 700 child abuse cases brought in an average year, few involved members of the Orthodox Jewish community. Some years, there were one or two arrests, or none.”In the past year, however, according to the Kings County D.A.’s office, 30 members of this community in Brooklyn have been prosecuted for child sexual abuse. Among those 30 prosecutions, half were for misdemeanor offenses, half for felony crimes.

This sudden breakthrough in the ability of the secular judicial system to prosecute sex crimes within this tight-lipped community has been facilitated by Kol Tzedek, the program that Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes launched a year ago. Its goal was to build a dialogue between secular law enforcement agencies and Orthodox Jews as well as within the community itself.

Kol Tzedek includes a hotline for victims to report abuse and receive psychological support anonymously until they are ready to go to court. The program also has a prevention component, operated with the help of three Jewish social organizations – the Jewish Board of Family and Children Services, Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services, and the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.

“It is a very scary issue,” said Dr. Hindie Klein, the psychotherapist who runs Ohel’s Tikvah Mental Health clinic in Borough Park in which several victims of sexual abuse have been treated. Klein is also in charge of Kol Tzedek at Ohel. This social services organization specializes in Jewish communities, provides help in several fields job search, poverty, mental health, foster care, etc, and last year, it celebrated its 40th year of existence. “Many members of the community don’t even know what is and what isn’t considered sexual assault!” Klein explained. “It’s Sabbath, the whole family gets together, and then you notice that this uncle or this neighbor has been playing a lot with your kid, taking him on his lap, touching him affectionately … Where is the line? Sometimes it’s nothing, and sometimes it’s worrying. The first thing that people lack in this community is definitely knowledge on this matter,” she pointed out, stressing each one of her words with both her hands. “But even then,” added Derek Saker, Ohel’s spokesman, who was sitting next to Hindie Klein, “once they know their children have been molested, families won’t always have the right reaction. There’s the fear of the stigma, enhanced by the fact that this is a very close-knit and modest community that we are talking about.”

According to Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, an activist who works in Williamsburg to prevent the sexual abuse of children, “If a kid comes home and tells his parents that one of his teachers or his rabbi touched his private parts, parents will have one of these two reactions: they will either slap him in the face and ground him for lying and being immodest, or they will tell him that it was nothing and that he should forget about it.” The general disbelief and/or denial was also noted by Shoshannah Frydman who is in charge of the project Kol Tzedek at the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, a social services agency operating in New York City. “In any community, it is a topic that people refuse to face, and in an insular community, as is the Orthodox Jewish community of Brooklyn, of course, these things tend to be hidden under the carpet even more. They have a different understanding of child protection and criminal justice.” Frydman also said that there was an important lack of information on sexual abuse itself. “People think that if their children were abused, it is going to influence their whole sexuality, or create problems when it comes to finding a wife or a husband.”

An indication of the resistance within the Orthodox community to bringing child molesters to justice can be found in posts from blogger Yerachmiel Lopin, who writes about child molestation in Brooklyn: “A source in Boro Park tells me that [a flyer calling for witnesses to testify against Lebovits and to contact Miss Gregory at the D.A.’s office] was strewn all over his neighborhood on Shabbat morning on November 21, 2009. By noon the flyers had all been removed. … It is striking that this secret activity is being undertaken. One would have thought that given the many children he may have molested the community leadership could easily assure the necessary roster of witnesses.”

“We can’t let things be handled by the community. Our only way out is to turn to secular justice,” insisted Victoria Polin, the social worker who founded the Awareness Center, based in Baltimore, MD. This international organization has been fighting child sexual abuse for eleven years in Jewish communities throughout the world by means of prevention programs and information workshops. Polin’s Awareness Center also helps survivors deal with the consequences of having been sexually assaulted. “So many children end up committing suicide, or falling into drugs… They can end up having very serious health problems because some were abused when they were very young and they had their insides torn; girls can have long-term gynecological issues; others will refuse to go to the dentist during their entire lives because of the trauma of having somebody else put something in their mouth,” Polin said.

In Williamsburg, on November 5, 2009, several newspapers reported that Motty Borger, 24, committed suicide, two days after his wedding. As his new wife was asleep, at 6:45 a.m., Borger jumped from his seventh floor room at the Avenue Plaza hotel. Although no suicide note was found, friends of Borger’s told reporters that, a few days before Borger killed himself, he had confided to his father-in-law and to his wife that Rabbi Lebovits had sodomized him.

“My son hasn’t killed himself,” said Yaakov Schonberg, the father of the abused boy in Lebovits’ trial. “But he spent four years navigating between crack and cocaine addiction, he was unable to get a job, he started stealing money from synagogues to finance his addiction… and of course he was arrested several times for stealing that money. It’s a vicious cycle!” In 2008, Yoav was sent to a rehab center in Los Angeles, CA, but he only stayed there for one month. Since then, even though he still wears his black velvet kippah, and considers himself a Jew, Yoav Schonberg says he has left the Hareidi world: he no longer goes to the synagogue to pray, he shaves his beard regularly and has stopped wearing his hair side curls. His father still has the side curls and follows the dress code of the Munkatch Orthodox sect, but he has also partially withdrawn from its strict rules: “I am under no rabbi. No rabbi tells me what to do now,” Yaakov Schonberg said.

This trend is not specific to the Jewish Orthodox communities, according to Victoria Polin, the Awareness Center founder. “When something this tragic happens, of course, victims will lose trust in their community, and that is why it is so important that secular authorities be there for survivors. Otherwise, they will feel like they have nobody to turn to,” Polin insisted.

* * *

District Attorney Hynes, who has spent his whole career in Brooklyn, is used to dealing with leaders of the Orthodox Jewish community. Several times in the past ten years, advocates for victims of sexual abuse have accused Hynes of seeking peace in his jurisdiction by turning a blind eye to the community’s practice of funneling abuse cases through religious tribunals and shutting out secular justice authorities. “But the real problem,” said Jerry Schmetterer, spokesman for the Brooklyn D.A., “was that they just didn’t trust us. We really feel it’s working well now. The fact that the program Kol Tzedek is anonymous is what really made the difference.”Dr. Hindie Klein who, as the director of a mental health clinic, has received “many anonymous calls from frightened parents looking for information,” said that the reason why it is so difficult for a family to talk to secular authorities is that they don’t know what consequences their call will have. “Will everything break out publicly? Will their family be outcast for something that could possibly have been nothing? They need to know that their call will have no consequences unless they decide otherwise.” According to Klein, as well, total anonymity and privacy is what Kol Tzedek’s strength depends on.

Every Orthodox Jewish community has religious tribunals, composed of three, or sometimes four rabbis. These rabbinical courts, called “Bet Din,” Hebrew for “House of Judgment,” are intended to settle every disagreement within the community and only rarely choose to report cases to secular judicial authorities. “It’s a matter of protecting the community,” explained Yaakov Schonberg. “By handling problems yourself, you prevent the others from knowing about those problems and from using them against you.” Breaking the rule and reaching out to secular authorities when there is a problem within the community, according to Schonberg, will get you excommunicated more often than not. Excommunication means that someone will not be allowed in any synagogue of the community, his/her children won’t be accepted in any yeshiva, and shopkeepers will refuse to do business with that person. “The pressure on the family is huge!” added Yaakov Schonberg.

In Lebovits’ case, for instance, the prosecutor presented evidence that pressure had been applied to the victim by a local religious court to persuade him to drop the charges. One of the defense attorneys’ witnesses was Rabbi Berel Ashkenazi, a friend of Lebovits’ who had come to court to testify that the victim was a “con man” as defense lawyer Arthur Aidala described him and that he was not worthy of trust. Ashkenazi, 44 years old and the father of nine children, had also been the plaintiff’s teacher, from October 2003 until June 2004 at Spinka religious school in Borough Park. Assistant D.A. Miss Gregory brought to the trial copies of a letter sent by one of Borough Park’s rabbinical courts to Rabbi Ashkenazi. It stipulated that Ashkenazi, to whom Schonberg had gone for assistance, should offer financial support to Schonberg to treat his drug addiction, and help him to a rehab center “if and only if” he agreed “to drop the case in a non-Jewish court.” This is just one of the many types of pressure a rabbinical court can apply to the community it rules in, if they are suspected of committing “Mesirah,” Hebrew for “informing.”

In the courtroom, after Assistant D.A. Gregory asked him to do so, witness Rabbi Ashkenazi explained what the concept of “Mesirah” meant for the Orthodox community: “A Jewish man is not allowed to go to a secular court against another Jew without the permission of his rabbi,” Ashkenazi explained. Then, Gregory continued: “And could you tell me what happens if someone does not follow that rule? Would that person be stigmatized for not doing so?” After a few seconds of hesitation and stammering, Ashkenazi replied: “If someone doesn’t do so, the rabbi would have to talk to him.” When the questioning was over, the witness swiftly got up from his seat and walked rapidly towards the exit of the courtroom, looking straight ahead, avoiding the stares of the audience.

The plaintiff’s father said he had also been under pressure during the month before the Lebovits’ trial began. “As soon as the date of the trial was officially announced, I received calls from everywhere, even from Israel!” He said people were calling to ask him to drop the case and go to a religious tribunal instead. “But you have to understand, rabbinical courts used to mean something,” Yaakov Schonberg said. “They used to have real authority and real moral superiority in the community. Now it has become a business, a way to make money!” Schonberg explained how thirty years ago, there used to be only one Bet Din in Borough Park and another one in Williamsburg, and how now, there were dozens in each neighborhood. “Now, it’s usually three young rabbis who know very little, fresh from rabbinical school, and they call themselves rabbinical court!” he said, gesticulating vigorously. He paused and added: “They don’t have to be approved by anyone, there is no election, no nomination, no validation whatsoever. They just open an office, put a sign that says “Bet Din,”… and charge each plaintiff $100 an hour!”

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, who has for over ten years been strongly encouraging victims to bring sexual offenders before a secular court, said he was now considered an outcast in Brooklyn. He was excommunicated two years ago after he launched a hotline to “teach victims and their relatives how to react when they are confronted with a sexual abuse situation.” “Today, there isn’t one synagogue in this borough that will accept me, even the most liberal ones,” Rosenberg said. “Such pressure has been made on every rabbi in Brooklyn that now I have to go pray in Manhattan, and even there, my rabbi received several calls from leaders in Williamsburg asking him not to let me in anymore. But he answered ‘No one rules in my synagogue but me!”

For Yaakov Schonberg, the fact that sexual crimes in the community are perpetrated by rabbis, teachers and other community leaders is “what’s worst about it. … These people have a very high stature, everybody knows and respects them.” According to Lebovits’ defense attorney Arthur Aidala, Lebovits’ son, Chaïm, is “a multi-millionaire,” who has “businesses all over the world,” a fact that Schonberg uses to describe how powerful Lebovits is, according to him.

“I do not know anything about money pressure or any other kind of pressure,” said Dr. Hindie Klein, the director of Ohel’s Mental Health clinic in Borough Park. “What I do know, and this is the case in every community, not just in the Jewish Orthodox world, is that sexual abusers are generally in a position of authority over the child.” She added: “It can be rabbis, but also teachers, camp leaders, or family members. The thing is that when a rabbi does it, it has a more dramatic resonance, because they represent this moral authority, and they are supposed to know better.”

* * *

One of the big problems judicial authorities face when dealing with the sexual abuse of children in Jewish Orthodox communities lies in defining the extent of it. Looking only at the cases reported to secular authorities, the problem would be almost non-existent. Jewish advocacy groups for sexual abuse victims argue, however, that molestation in the Hareidi community is heavily underreported to secular authorities. According to Victoria Polin, from the Awareness Center, “it is generally considered that 84 percent of child sexual abuse cases are never reported to the police. But in the Jewish Orthodox community, we believe the rate is around 99 percent … And this is an optimistic estimation!”According to a study issued in 1988 by the National Institute of Mental Health, the typical child sex offender molests an average of 117 children. “There aren’t many sexual abusers in each community,” observed Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg. “But even if there’s only one or two in each neighborhood, the problem is that it’s easy for them: they have all the children at their disposal.”

No organization seems to have kept any record or statistics concerning child sex abuse in the Jewish Orthodox community. The Metropolitan Council offered support, long before Kol Tzedek, to sexual abuse victims “but [they] never ever reported the number of calls [they] received on a file or anything. [They] have absolutely no figures concerning the percentage of children being sexually abused in our communities,” explained Shoshannah Frydman, head of Family Services at the Met Council.

Which is why, Dr. Hindie Klein from Ohel said, Kol Tzedek is such a step forward. “They have done a fabulous job at the D.A.’s office, encouraging victims to talk. They are extremely culturally competent and they keep records of the calls. This is going to help evaluate the extent of the problem in depth.”

Both the Met Council and Ohel Children’s Home organize regular meetings and workshops with Jewish Community Council’s directors and other community leaders in schools and synagogues, as well as with social workers throughout Brooklyn. “The aim of these meetings is to give information on what sexual abuse means for a victim, how to handle the trauma, how to identify a sexual offender in the community...,” explained Shoshannah Frydman.

While the Kol Tzedek hotline’s goal is to guide survivors mainly towards a secular legal process, the Met council, Ohel and the Jewish Board focus more on prevention, treatment, awareness, specific training of social workers within the community, outreach and financial support both for sexual abuse victims and for perpetrators. “There are a number of skilled clinicians who are providing treatment to the victims in our Borough Park counseling center,” explained Faye Wilbur, licensed social worker and coordinator of Kol Tzedek for the Jewish Board. “Our therapists are especially trained in working with trauma, and are members of the Orthodox community.” Apart from Kol Tzedek, the Jewish Board has, since 1995, been taking part in another program to fight the sexual molestation of children in Borough Park. Called “Be’ad HaYeled” (Hebrew for “On behalf of the child”), its goal is to “educate the community on the signs and symptoms of abuse and neglect,” explained Jo Gonsalves, director of communications for the Jewish Board.

Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services also tried to tackle the issue repeatedly. In the past years, this social agency produced several videos with survivors of child sexual abuse testifying on camera, and appealing to other victims to come forward and search for professional assistance.

Kol Tzedek is the program of which the purpose is specifically to encourage sexual abuse victims to press charges in non-Jewish courts. However, it is not the Brooklyn D.A.’s first attempt to address issues that touch specifically the Jewish Orthodox community, nor is it the first attempt to address specifically the issue of child molestation in that community. A domestic violence program, called Project Eden, and an additional project to fight drug addiction, were launched several years ago. But more importantly, in 1997, Ohel had already partnered with the D.A. to create the Offender Treatment Program. Its aim, as its name clearly suggests, was to treat child sexual abusers who were members of the Orthodox community. But the program is now defunct. According to an article published in 2000 in The Jewish Week, the program treated 16 sexual offenders. Eight had gone through the secular criminal justice system and had been assigned to treatment. The remaining eight were also in treatment, but their cases had been handled by local Bet Dins and had never reached New York criminal courts. After a few months, the program died and it took the Kings County D.A.’s office more than ten years to come up with a new system. “It is essential to have a program that is respectful of the nuances,” explained Faye Wilbur, the counselor and social worker in charge of Kol Tzedek operations for the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services. “The program’s partners have staff that speak the language of the community, literally and figuratively.” The importance of this factor in building trust in secular justice was also stressed by Derek Saker, from Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services: “When you’ve been through such a horrendous experience, the last thing you want is to talk to people who do not understand where you come from,” he said.

The Kol Tzedek hotline welcomes callers Hebrew or English. The phone is answered by a full-time licensed social worker specialized in the needs and conventions of the Orthodox community. “Should a caller want to file a prosecution, they will then be taken care of by the team of 18 prosecutors in the Sex Crimes Unit with similar specializations,” said D.A.’s spokesman Schmetterer. “The final goal, of course, is to have them press charges, because it is the only way for us to fight child sexual abuse in the area. But we never push them, we let them go through the process at their own pace. It’s all about building trust.”

* * *

After only one year of existence, Kol Tzedek still has to prove its long run efficacy. Brooklyn D.A.’s spokesman Schmetterer made it clear that “for now, there are no plans to expand the program,” although he acknowledged that “obviously, with more resources, [they] would be able to do more.”However, at the beginning of March of this year, the state granted the Met Council $500,000 for the purpose of intensifying its prevention program throughout the 25 Jewish Community Councils in New York City, nine of which are located in Brooklyn.

The funds were requested by Brooklyn’s Democratic assemblyman Dov Hikind, and are part of a bigger budget, also allocated in March 2010, and dedicated to abuse awareness and action in other communities. Hikind has made the fight against child molestation in the Jewish Community the signature issue of his term. In fact, it was partly in response to one of his weekly radio shows, in the summer of 2008, that Kol Tzedek was launched a year ago. On his radio program, Hikind several times prompted victims to report to competent secular authorities what had happened to them, and, according to him, he received dozens of private calls from survivors every week.

How the $500,000 will be spent to fight child sexual abuse has yet to be determined. According to the Met Council, most of it should go to prevention and educational programs in Borough Park, the neighborhood which carries the largest Jewish Orthodox community outside of Israel.

“We feel we are getting a lot of support from the local councils, the schools, the synagogues…” noted Shoshannah Frydman, from the Met Council. This observation is shared by most children’s advocates: things are starting to change among members of the Orthodox communities. “We are now facing what the Catholic church faced ten years ago,” said activist Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg. “Awareness keeps growing day after day. It’s going to take some time, but we are getting there…,” he added. And for Ohel spokesman Derek Saker as well, the struggle has only just begun: “Curbing this issue is going to take a long, long process, and there still needs a lot to be done tremendously!” confirmed Derek Saker, at Ohel.

Still, “five years ago, if you Googled ‘pedophilia and orthodox Jews’, you would’ve only gotten results for anti-Semitic websites,” noted Victoria Polin, from the Awareness Center. “Now, you get respectable organizations, reliable reports, specialized advocacies, blogs maintained by members of the community itself.” And this transformation was also noticed recently by Yaakov Schonberg, the father of Baruch Lebovits’ young victim: “Two years ago, if I had walked into a synagogue after Lebovits’ “guilty” verdict, everybody would have been very hostile for attacking such a well-respected rabbi. But now, it’s the opposite: I’ve been considered as the winner, I’ve been welcomed as a hero!”

Bishop Eddie Long is the latest in a series of religious figures
and institutions to face allegations of sexual misconduct. Among them:

The Roman Catholic Church
The church has paid more than $2 billion since 1992 to victims of
child sexual abuse by priests. A 2004 report prepared for the U.S.
Board of Catholic Bishops found "significant and disturbing" evidence
that church leaders had failed to effectively deal with the implicated
priests. The crisis continues, with new allegations emerging across
Europe and questions about actions by Pope Benedict XVI, who, while a
cardinal, oversaw the Vatican office dealing with the crisis.

Rabbi Baruch Lebovitz
In a case that shook New York's Orthodox Jewish community, the
Brooklyn rabbi received a prison sentence in April after being
convicted of molesting a teenager.

The Rev. George Alan Rekers
A Baptist minister, founding member of the Family Research Council and
an outspoken opponent of gay adoption, Rekers resigned in May from the
board of the National Association for the Therapy and Treatment of
Homosexuality after a Miami alternative newspaper published photos of
him returning from an overseas trip with a male prostitute. Rekers
denied being gay and said he had hired the man through an online ad to
help him with his luggage.

Tony Alamo
The Arkansas evangelist was convicted in 2009 of transporting girls as
young as 9 across state lines for sex. Alamo, who is serving a
175-year prison sentence, has said he was the victim of a conspiracy.

Yasser Mohamed Shahade
The Egyptian-born imam was charged in 2009 with sexually assaulting a
13-year-old boy during a sleepover at a Tampa mosque. He pleaded guilty
and was placed on probation pending deportation.

Bishop Earl Paulk
Pastor of the huge, multiracial Chapel Hill Harvester Church in south
DeKalb County and known for his progressive social ministry, Paulk fell
into disrepute after a series of women accused him in lawsuits of
manipulating them into sexual relationships. Paulk pleaded guilty in
2008 to lying under oath after a DNA test showed he fathered a son with
his sister-in-law. He died in 2009.

The Rev. Ted Haggard
Pastor of Colorado's largest church and president of the National
Association of Evangelicals, Haggard resigned from both posts in 2006
after acknowledging he had frequented a gay prostitute. He and his
co-pastor wife recently founded a new church. The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart
The pioneering Baton Rouge, La., televangelist admitted in 1988 to
hiring a prostitute after being caught at the motel where he arranged
the tryst. In a moment of television history, the Assemblies of God
minister tearfully told his congregation and wife, "I have sinned
against you." He stepped down from his ministry in 1991 after he was
caught with another prostitute, but later resumed its leadership.

Lebovits Abuse Conviction Is OverturnedBrooklyn Travel Agent Was Sentenced to 32 YearsBy Paul BergerForward - April 25, 2012An appeals court has reversed the child sex abuse conviction of
Brooklyn travel agent Baruch Lebovits, who was sentenced in 2010 to up
to 32 years in prison.

Alan Dershowitz, chief counsel for Lebovits on appeal,
called the unanimous reversal by a four-judge appellate panel a “total
victory.”

Lebovits was not acquitted outright but instead had his
conviction reversed, which could allow the District Attorney to retry
the case. But Dershowitz doubted prosecutors would be able to mount a
new case.

“Under the circumstances it will be impossible for the
prosecution to successfully retry the case because we now have
overwhelming evidence that will require that the case be thrown out,”
Dershowitz said on April 25.

Lebovits, who was convicted of eight counts of sexual
assault, was the most high-profile conviction secured by Brooklyn
District Attorney Charles Hynes since the D.A. launched a campaign
against child sex abuse in the ultra-Orthodox community three years ago.

The case against Lebovits, a Boro Park travel agent,
began to unravel in April, 2011, when police arrested Samuel Kellner on
charges that he paid at least one of Lebovits’ alleged victims $10,000
to falsely testify he had been abused.

Kellner was also charged with trying to extort $400,000
from Lebovits’ family in return for keeping other alleged victims from
coming forward.

Hynes stood by the testimony of the one boy who did
testify at trial that Levovits had abuded him. That secured Lebovits’
conviction.

Lebovits was released on bail and placed under house arrest pending an appeal, which was argued by Dershowitz earlier this year.

On April 24, a panel of the Supreme Court Of The State
Of New York Appellate Division ruled that although prosecutors had
sufficient evidence to bring a case against Lebovits, they acted in
several ways that prejudiced the trial.

The judges found that prosecutors failed to provide his
defense team with a set of notes taken by a New York Police detective
that accused the sole defense witness of attempting to bribe the alleged
victim in return for retracting his complaint.

The judges also criticized a prosecutor who tried to
discredit a defense witness during summation by accusing him of being a
child molester. The judges found that this charge “had no basis within
the record and was improper.”

A spokesman for the District Attorney’s office did not return a call for comment.

This article has been altered from its original
version to correct its characterization of the notes taken by a New York
police detective regarding the case and at what point in the trial a
prosecutor made accusatory statements about a defense witness that the
appeals court ruled were unjustified.

Sam Kellner, who says his son was abused, helped the Brooklyn DA in his
fight against child sexual abuse. Now, Kellner himself is himself facing
accusations of extortion. Is he being set up?

For
Jews, Chanukah is a season of light and miracles. It wasn’t like that
last month for Sam Kellner, a chasidic resident of Brooklyn’s Borough
Park.

Unemployed and facing mounting
debt from his lonely fight against both the powers that be in his
community and the Brooklyn district attorney, Kellner, 50, was
contemplating a Chanukah in darkness: he had pawned the family silver,
and the menorah along with it, to free up some cash to pay his attorney.When his wife found out, she was upset, so Kellner trudged back to the silver shop on 13th Avenue to retrieve the menorah.

If anyone could use a miracle, it’s Sam Kellner.

“They
took everything from me,” Kellner says. “They’ve killed me on the
street, kicked me out of my shul. I have no job, no money, no friends.
And the DA is going after me. All because I committed the sin of
fighting for my son.”

In 2008, when Kellner reported his teenage
son’s alleged molester to the authorities, he knew he would make enemies
in his chasidic community, despite having secured permission to do so
from rabbis. What he never expected was that one of the people turning
against him would be the Brooklyn district attorney.

To hear him tell it, Kellner — whose son reported he had been touched inappropriately by a man named Baruch Lebovits
— went from being a valued law enforcement resource to the subject of
wrongful perjury, extortion and conspiracy charges, all because he
sought redress in the criminal justice system. If convicted, he faces up
to 21 years in prison.

Kellner’s case, for which a trial date
has not been set, is dizzyingly complex and brings together a number of
threads in the ongoing story of child sexual abuse in Orthodox Brooklyn:
the conduct of Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes’ office, which has come under
great scrutiny of late for its perceived failure to aggressively pursue
prosecution of sex abuse cases in the haredi community for fear of
losing a key voting bloc; the religious courts that seek to address
child molestation within the community; and the workings of the Vaad
HaTznius, the communal modesty patrols to whom alleged molesters are
often reported.

The case reaches into the highest echelons of
chasidic Brooklyn, including the powerful editor of the newspaper Der
Yid, and of the legal community; Alan Dershowitz worked on the appeal of
Baruch Lebovits,
who, in part because of the doggedness of Sam Kellner, was convicted in
2010 on eight counts of sexual abuse (his conviction was overturned on a
technicality and a new trial reordered). And now, the Lebovits and Kellner cases have become linked in a legal and moral drama.

Some
observers maintain that the climate in the Orthodox community is
changing when it comes to reporting sexual abuse to law enforcement, and
that Hynes’ office has shed its seeming reluctance to prosecute
ultra-Orthodox sex abuse cases rather than settle them with plea deals
involving little or no jail time. (The recent conviction of an
unlicensed counselor and well-connected member of the Satmar community, Nechemya Weberman,
for sexually abusing a teenage girl has been hailed as evidence of
Hynes’ new resolve, as has his arrest not just of four men for witness
tampering in the case, but of others who took photographs of the victim
at trial).

But Kellner’s case complicates the picture. It and the
Lebovits case unfolded before pressure on Hynes’ office intensified to
take these cases to trial rather than dispose of them with plea deals.
In a strange irony, those who support Kellner believe that it is
precisely because the Lebovits case actually went to trial and resulted
in a conviction and long prison sentence that Kellner is now under
indictment.

As he awaits trial, Kellner, a man who did the right
thing — at least by the standards of secular society — by reporting the
crime of child molestation to the police, now stands accused of being an
alleged criminal, while those who tried to stop him remain unpunished.

A
spokesman for Hynes’ office denied the charge that the Kellner
prosecution was politically motivated. The spokesman, Jerry Schmetterer,
also said no one in the DA’s office would be made available to speak
about the case since it is an ongoing investigation.

A Father’s Fight For Justice BeginsHis
black velvet yarmulke slightly askew, Sam Kellner is leaning back in a
chair in the lounge at the Brooklyn Marriott, twisting his wiry grey
beard. Nearby, young Orthodox couples on “shidduch dates” sip soda from
plastic cups.

The significance of the location — the hotel abuts
the Brooklyn district attorney’s office — is not lost on Kellner.
“That’s where they had me locked up for 14 hours after I was arrested,”
he says, pointing out the window.

Kellner’s saga began in early
2008, the day his teenage son disclosed that Baruch Lebovits, 61, a
travel agent and cantor from a rich and well-connected family, had given
him a ride home the night before and touched him inappropriately in his
car.

Furious, Kellner wanted to file a police report, but would
not do so without first securing the permission of a rabbi. So he sought
— and received — approval from Rabbi Chaim Flohr, a highly regarded
rabbi who presides over a religious court in Monsey. In consultation
with the Vaad HaTznius in Borough Park, Rabbi Flohr established that
there were credible accusations against Lebovits going back years.

Nervous
to report on his own, Kellner contacted the Williamsburg Vaad HaTznius,
which he was told had a good relationship with the Brooklyn DA’s
office. (Attempts to reach members of the Vaad by phone were
unsuccessful.) Kellner says they put him in touch with an attorney,
Asher White. (An e-mail to White was not returned.) White’s wife Henna
is the DA’s liaison to the Jewish community. She also heads his office’s
Kol Tzedek hotline, established in April of 2009 to encourage haredi
victims of sexual abuse to report these crimes to the authorities.

After speaking with Kellner, Asher White took him to Henna’s office.

Kellner
recalls the meeting. “Henna told me, ‘Sam, are you going to go all the
way with this? I will take you to an ADA [assistant district attorney],
but don’t screw me. We’ve had problems with [haredi] witnesses dropping
out.’ And I told her, ‘Henna, I am going all the way.’”

An ADA
interviewed the boy and determined the alleged abuse was a misdemeanor.
Because of that, along with Lebovits’ age, clean record, and the lack of
additional victims, the DA’s office wouldn’t pursue the case.

Kellner was crushed. But on the advice of Henna White, he reached out to then-sex crimes detective Steve Litwin.

Litwin
interviewed the boy and concurred with the ADA. But he offered a way
forward: based on his experience, Litwin believed that Lebovits was a
serial offender. If Kellner could find and encourage other victims to
report, they would have a better chance of bringing a case. It was the
beginning of a working relationship that would last several years.

‘People Were Coming After Me On The Street’

“At first I tell him, ‘Steve, you’re the detective, how is it I should find victims?’” Kellner recalled.

But
Kellner mulled the idea and hit the streets. His first stop was the
Williamsburg Vaad to obtain the name of another boy who had made
credible allegations against Lebovits. The Vaad directed Kellner to a
young man, Yoel (not his real name), who told Kellner he had been
molested by Lebovits. Kellner asked Yoel if he wanted to go to the
police, and when the young man said yes, Kellner secured rabbinic
approval from Rabbi Shraga Hager, a chasidic leader.

Police
records indicate that Yoel was interviewed by Litwin, the sex-crimes
detective, on March 6, 2008 and disclosed multiple incidents of being
sodomized by Lebovits, starting when he was 12. The acts alleged
included felonies.

On March 11, 2008 Lebovits was arrested. He
was indicted on the grand jury testimony of Kellner’s son and Yoel. The
two cases were severed and Kellner worried his son’s misdemeanor case
might be prosecuted first, forcing the teenager to take the stand,
something Kellner hoped to avoid. If Lebovits were tried and convicted
on a felony first, Kellner reasoned, the DA was unlikely to subsequently
pursue a misdemeanor charge. Kellner also worried that the DA might not
go forward with Yoel’s case, given the young man’s tenuous emotional
state. (Yoel was so damaged emotionally he was often unable to meet his
basic needs and Kellner says he occasionally bought the young man food;
Litwin also took him out for meals, according to law enforcement
materials.)

So, Kellner obtained permission from the Borough Park
Vaad to track down yet another victim, Zev (not his real name), whose
information Kellner obtained from Assemblyman Dov Hikind’s office.
Hikind received calls from hundreds of sex abuse survivors after he did a
series of radio shows on the issue in 2008.

Kellner approached
Zev, who disclosed that he, too, was a Lebovits victim, and struggling
with drug addiction. Kellner got rabbinic approval for Zev, who then
made a report to Litwin on Sept.16, 2008; his allegations were also
felonies.

Zev and Yoel went to the grand jury in November 2008.

By
then, Kellner was experiencing severe harassment in his community for
“informing” on Lebovits. Many people accused him of fabricating the
allegations for money.

“People were screaming at me, coming after
me on the street, blowing out my tires,” Kellner says. “I was kicked
out from my shul, my kids kicked out of school, nobody would hire me.”

Kellner
says a variety of people in the community, including rabbis, began
transmitting monetary offers to him to drop the case. He rejected all of
them. He then got pressured to withdraw the charges and go to the beit
din, or religious court.

Kellner was summoned to, but did not
attend, a beit din in Monsey. Then, Kellner says, Yisroel Makavetzky,
who has a beit din in upstate Monroe, demanded Kellner adjudicate his
son’s case against Lebovits there. (Makavetzky had already issued
rulings forbidding Kellner and Zev from pursuing justice in criminal
court.) Kellner agreed to go to beit din, but made it clear he would not
drop the criminal charges. He also insisted that Rabbi Flohr and
attorney Michael Dowd be present (the latter to ensure everything would
be done in accordance with secular law), and that his beit din legal
expenses and fees be paid.

According to Kellner, a chasidic
businessman got involved, promising to pay Kellner’s beit din fees. He
also told Kellner that if he dropped the criminal case and the beit din
found in his favor, he could receive up to $400,000 in damages. Kellner
told the businessman he wasn’t interested: Rabbi Flohr had given him
permission to go to the police, and he wasn’t dropping the criminal
charges. And if he did go to the beit din and won, Kellner said he would
accept only funds to cover treatment for his son — estimated at $30,000
by a rabbi who does medical referrals for the community.

Ultimately,
Kellner’s conditions were rejected and the beit din never convened,
though Kellner was billed $1,800 for its consultation work “in the
matter between Shlomo Aaron Kellner and the Lebovits family related to
damages to his son.” When Kellner approached the businessman to honor
his agreement to pay the bill, the man sent him to Lebovits’ son, Meyer;
the businessman told Kellner he had been fronting for Meyer all along.

Kellner
approached Meyer and began the conversation by telling him that his
only complaint against him was the unpaid beit din-related fees. Meyer
then castigated Kellner for going to the police instead of coming to
him, accusing Kellner of ruining his reputation. A wide-ranging
conversation ensued that touched on the abortive beit din, the criminal
cases against Baruch Lebovits (and specifically Kellner’s wish to see
Lebovits take a plea in Kellner’s son’s case) and other attempts to get
Kellner to drop the charges.

Unbeknownst to Kellner, Meyer was recording the conversation.

More Payoff Offers

Kellner
says he also got a payoff offer from Moshe Friedman, a cousin of Baruch
Lebovits. Friedman, also known as Moshe Gabbai, is a longtime power
broker in the Satmar community, going back to when he was the personal
secretary (or gabbai, hence the nickname) of the previous Satmar rebbe,
Moshe Teitelbaum. He is also the editor of the main Satmar newspaper,
Der Yid. An article in an Israeli paper noted that Friedman has “many
senators and politicians flocking to his door throughout the year,
especially before elections.”

Kellner says Friedman contacted him
in 2009 with a job offer selling advertising for Der Yid. Kellner, who
had worked selling toner cartridges and paper goods, began making calls
on the paper’s behalf. During that time, Friedman ordered Kellner to
drop his criminal case. Kellner refused. Friedman came back with an
offer: “the family” had had a meeting and was prepared to fine Baruch
Lebovits $250,000 as an “apology” to Kellner if he dropped the charges.
Kellner rejected the offer and quit.

“My son is not a prostitute,” Kellner says. “There is not a price in this world that is going to justify [what Lebovits did].”

Kellner
informed Detective Litwin — with whom he was working closely — about
attempts to buy him off. He says he also met with sex crimes Bureau
Chief Rhonnie Jaus and assistant district attorneys Miss Gregory and
Chris LaLine about the witness tampering and intimidation.

A spokesman for the DA’s office told The Jewish Week that Jaus was not at liberty to comment on a pending case.

There
were also attempts to pay Zev to drop his charges, some documented in
Litwin’s notes (one came from a man named Beryl Ashkenazi). Kellner
feared that, needing money for drugs, Zev would succumb to temptation
and take a payoff. With Kellner’s encouragement, Zev held firm.

In
February 2010, Lebovits went to trial in Zev’s case. Yoel’s case had
been scheduled to go first but he abruptly stopped communicating with
prosecutors and transmitted his refusal to cooperate through an
apparently newly retained attorney.

Lebovits’ defense argued that
Zev had fabricated the allegations in order to extort money from the
Lebovits family. The jury didn’t buy it, and Lebovits was convicted on
March 8, 2010.

Before sentencing, Lebovits’ lawyer brought in a
new witness who claimed Zev had told him he had fabricated his
allegations in order to get money. The judge, Patricia DiMango,
expressed skepticism about this 11th hour revelation and ultimately
found the allegation without merit. She sentenced Lebovits to 10 2/3 to
32 years in jail on the eight sex abuse charges.

The sentence
sent shockwaves through the chasidic community, where no one convicted
of this kind of crime had ever faced such a stiff sentence (Jerry
Brauner, convicted on sex-abuse charges in 2002, was sentenced to 11
years probation). Lebovits’ lawyers vowed to appeal.

Kellner Arrested: ‘It’s Mind-Boggling’

About
a year later, on April 12, 2011, Sam Kellner was arrested. The arrest
came as a shock, as did the charges, whose substance he learned only
after he had been bussed to and from Rikers and done a perp walk in
front of assembled media the next day, when Hynes held a press
conference. By that time, Kellner had already been indicted, charged
with extortion, perjury and conspiracy.

The following day, an
appellate judge ordered Lebovits released from prison on house arrest on
$250,000 bail pending the appeal of his conviction.

Kellner was
charged — along with five unindicted co-conspirators — with attempting
to extort money with a promise that, if paid, Kellner would get the
complaining witnesses not to testify and prevent a third victim from
coming forward (the indictment also charges Kellner with threatening to
bring a fourth victim).

The case is being handled by the Rackets Bureau, headed by Michael Vecchione.

While
not named in the indictment, it is clear from the grand jury minutes
that the co-conspirators are: Leizer Wolf Hager; Yidel Wolf of the
Borough Park Vaad; Wolf Wertzberger; Yakov Leizer Horowitz, an
anti-informing activist who had harassed Kellner; and Simon Taub — all
of whom Kellner allegedly sent as messengers to get money from Meyer
Lebovits. All of these men’s names were mentioned in the tape-recorded
conversation between Meyer Lebovits and Kellner and in Meyer Lebovits’
grand jury testimony. (Taub was arrested in July 2010 — and later
pleaded guilty —for attempting to extort money from Meyer, who had
allegedly molested Taub’s son.)

Kellner was also charged with
using Moshe Friedman, the editor of Der Yid, to convey his demand to
Meyer Lebovits for a monetary payment in return for a guarantee that
Kellner would stop the complaining witnesses — whom he allegedly
controlled — from testifying.

Additionally, Kellner was charged with paying Yoel to lie before a grand jury and falsely accuse Lebovits of molesting him.

The
only people to testify at Kellner’s grand jury were Meyer Lebovits,
Moshe Friedman and Yoel. In his testimony, Friedman alleges that Kellner
came to him, “That I should convince Lebovits’ family that they should
give him [the] $250,000.”

“It’s mind-boggling,” Kellner says of
the charges. “All these people offering payoffs, and I’m telling this
all along to Detective Litwin, and now I’m the extortionist?”

The DA’s Case Against Kellner

Indeed,
the timing, quality and sources of the DA’s evidence against Kellner
all raise questions about the legitimacy of the charges, say observers,
as does evidence in the DA’s possession that is favorable to Kellner.

The
conspiracy charges were brought to the DA by Meyer Lebovits in May 2010
— after the guilty verdict in his father’s case. They are based on
Meyer’s statements and the 2009 tape-recorded conversation between Meyer
and Kellner, which occurred almost a year before Lebovits’ trial. It is
unclear why, given its purported importance as evidence of an extortion
plot, the tape was not brought to the attention of law enforcement
before the trial.

The DA’s transcript of the tape (in Yiddish
with an English translation) was reviewed for The Jewish Week by a
native Yiddish speaker. Without context, the meaning of many of the
exchanges is ambiguous at best; to someone with knowledge of the back
story, it becomes clear that the discussion is not about attempts by
Kellner to extort Meyer Lebovits using emissaries, but rather is about
the beit din and those involved in it, Kellner’s desire to see Baruch
Lebovits plead guilty in his son’s case, and attempts by others to get
Kellner to drop the charges. (The reviewer also determined that many of
the exchanges critical to the overall meaning of the conversation were
distorted in the translation.)

Then there is the matter of the
unindicted co-conspirators. Typically, co-conspirators are unindicted
because they are cooperating with the government. It is unclear whether
the DA interviewed any of these men in connection with the Kellner case
(none testified at the grand jury, and two recently claimed they were
unaware of their involvement in the case).

The charges that
Kellner paid Yoel to lie also seem suspect in light of investigators’
reports and videos in the DA’s possession, as well as information
independently obtained by The Jewish Week.

Yoel alleged to a DA
investigator six months after Lebovits’ conviction, on Sept. 15, 2010,
that Kellner paid him $10,000 in $100 weekly increments to fabricate the
charges against Lebovits. Yoel made these allegations about Kellner in
the presence of his lawyer, John Lonuzzi, a partner in Lonuzzi and
Woodland and a past president of the Brooklyn Bar Association. (The DA
apparently declined to charge Yoel for allegedly giving false grand jury
testimony). It is not known how Yoel, who had been barely able to take
care of himself, was able to secure or afford Lonuzzi’s services.

“If
I’m a prosecutor trying to scrutinize the reliability of the
information I am now getting, after the trial is over, I would ask, ‘Why
didn’t you give this over sooner?,’” Bennett Gershman, a professor at
Pace Law School and an expert in prosecutorial misconduct, told The
Jewish Week. “It doesn’t add up. All of this evidence must be tempered
by [each] source’s stake in the case, his motives, his biases.”

The
DA also has evidence that suggests Yoel’s allegations against Kellner
were made under duress. This includes several video interviews of Zev
shot after Lebovits’ conviction by people who claim to be making a movie
about Zev’s life. (The Jewish Week has information that this was a
ruse.) The interviewers are not seen on camera, though two are referred
to throughout as Sholem and Shimon Yosef. They ask Zev questions about
his history of abuse and the Lebovits case.

When Zev is asked why
Yoel “got out” of the Lebovits case, he replies, “They scared him, they
scared him,” clarifying that “they” are the Lebovitses. “They, they
terrorized him. You have no idea what they did to him.”

Zev also claims “they” got Yoel a lawyer and promised him money, which he never got.

Zev’s
statements are supported by an interview that a DA investigator
conducted with a woman named Natalie B., identified as Yoel’s “best
friend,” in May 2012. Natalie told the investigator that Lebovits’
eldest daughter had threatened to produce two witnesses to testify that
Yoel had molested them as children if he did not drop his case against
her father. She also told the investigator that Yoel fled to Israel “out
of fear” seven months prior.

It is not known whether the DA has
ever questioned members of the Lebovits family about this alleged
intimidation of Yoel, but given all this — and the fact that Litwin, the
DA and two grand juries clearly found Yoel’s allegations against Baruch
Lebovits credible — it is difficult to understand why the DA so
uncritically accepted Yoel’s claims of being paid to lie by Kellner.

In
addition, The Jewish Week has independent confirmation that Kellner
obtained Yoel’s name from the Vaad, to whom Yoel had reported being
abused by Lebovits prior to ever meeting Kellner. This negates the
charge that Kellner paid Yoel to fabricate his abuse claim.

As
for the video interviews of Zev, it appears they too were part of an
effort to generate evidence of an extortion plot against the Lebovits
family after Lebovits’ conviction. Chaim Levin, an abuse survivor and
victims’ advocate, told The Jewish Week he learned that one of the
people behind the video was a man named Sholem Weisner (presumably the
Sholem referred to on the tape). Levin says he met Weisner at a
gathering on the Upper West Side in March of 2011, where Weisner bragged
he had recently taken Zev to Florida, bugged the house with expensive
recording equipment and “made sure Zev was good and high” before
interviewing him in order to get evidence that “they could take to the
DA” to clear Lebovits. Levin — who knows another alleged Lebovits victim
— says he was horrified.

An attempt to contact Weisner was unsuccessful.

In
June 2010, apparently the same Sholem Weisner gave the DA his sworn
affidavit stating that Zev told him he had lied for money about being
molested by Lebovits and that he had been pressured by “powerful people”
to make the false allegations. Weisner also told a DA investigator that
Lebovits was well known in the community as “a man who liked young
men,” but “was not a threat.” (In 2007, Weisner was arrested on felony
charges of cheating and first-degree larceny as well as criminal
trespass in connection with marking cards at a Connecticut casino.)

The
Zev videos, possibly made to support Weisner’s affidavit, in fact
contradict it. They are also favorable to Kellner. When asked whether
Kellner ever tried to “shut him up,” or offer him money to drop the
case, Zev responds, “No … Kellner always told me, Zev, go to court,
you’re going to tell the truth, tell the truth.” (Zev also says many
people offered his family money to drop the charges.)

‘I’ll Keep Fighting For My Son’

On
April 25, 2012, Lebovits’ conviction was overturned by a New York
appeals court on an issue unrelated to Kellner. A new trial was ordered.

The DA vowed to retry the case but no trial date has been set.

Meanwhile, Sam Kellner is still waiting to clear his name. In that effort he has found supporters outside his community.

“The
whole situation doesn’t make sense,” Rabbi Yosef Blau, the spiritual
adviser at the rabbinical seminary of Yeshiva University, told The
Jewish Week. “The idea that major players like Moshe Gabbai would be
doing Sam Kellner’s bidding is mind-bogglingly absurd to [anyone
familiar with how that community works].”

Some observers fear the
charges against Kellner are enough to threaten the possibility of a
retrial, not to mention a conviction, of Baruch Lebovits.

“I was
devastated by Kellner’s arrest because it cast doubt on Lebovits’
conviction,” the blogger and advocate known as Yerachmiel Lopin told The
Jewish Week. “I strongly suspected the evidence against him was
fabricated and misrepresented to get Lebovits off the hook.”

Lebovits’ lawyer, Arthur Aidala, declined to comment on the two cases.

Even
if Lebovits is retried and convicted, Kellner’s attorney nonetheless
believes that the prosecution of his client is politically motivated.

“I
believe the DA came under such pressure from [powerful elements] in the
community after Lebovits was sentenced that he didn’t want to further
alienate them,” Dowd told The Jewish Week. “In order to placate them,
the DA agreed to prosecute Sam [based on these incredible stories], even
though he knew it could sabotage the case against Lebovits.”

That
Hynes’ office has apparently not acted on allegations made to its own
investigator that Yoel was intimidated by the Lebovits family, and on
information reported to police that other witnesses — including Zev and
Kellner himself — were harassed and subjected to multiple instances of
witness tampering, lends support to Dowd’s position.

According to
Pace Law School’s Gershman, all of this “seems to accord with the
perception of how Hynes goes about his prosecution responsibilities,
particularly as they relate to certain constituencies he’s worried about
losing support from.”

Indeed, a source familiar with the Kellner
case told The Jewish Week that “there were serious misgivings about it
[within the DA’s office], but they were overruled,” the implication
being overruled from on high. This could account for why it took almost a
year after Meyer Lebovits came to the DA with information about his
tape for the police to arrest Kellner.

According to Dowd, this is “one of the most stunning examples of intimidation by the government I have ever seen.”

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Survivors ARE Heroes!

The Awareness Center believes ALL survivors of sex crimes should be given yellow ribbons to wear proudly.

Survivors of sexual violence (as adults and/or as a child) are just as deserving of a yellow ribbon as the men and women of our armed forces, who have been held captive as hostages or prisoners of war.

Survivors of sexual violence have been forced to learn how to survive, being held captive not by foreigners, but mostly by their own family members, teachers, camp counselors, coaches babysitters, rabbis, cantors or other trusted authority figures.

For these reasons ALL survivors of sexual violence should be seen as heroes!